I was sitting at the Star writing this, when I heard a knock at the door. It looked like a humble Jehovah’s Witness, but it turned out to be an evil robot double of me, sent to conquer earth! I tried to run, but I had seen all the ‘Friday the 13th’ movies and knew I had to slip, and when I did … ARRRRRGGGHHH! THE FIRST TUITION BILL FROM NIU!!!

Just at that moment I heard a voice from above. I looked up and my guardian angel, Leif Garrett, was flying above me. Next to him was the Grim Reaper.

“You must play me in three games to get back to earth,” the Reaper said. “If you don’t win, then you’ll go through eternity in hell! You’ll be Nell Carter’s La-Z-Boy for 1,000 years, and Pee Wee’s jail roommate for another 1,000!

“Roseanne Barr will be your wife, and you’ll be forced to listen to Menudo records forever! Besides that you’ll have swarthy Chicagoans taking away your beer, and you’ll have to watch Johnny B. on the Loose forever!”

I had to think fast. I chose Operation, Don’t Tip the Waiter and Hollywood Squares. I beat him by a nose on Operation. Don’t Tip the Waiter was a piece of cake. (Feel free to groan at any time at these stupid jokes.) But the Squares was the ringer. I nailed Nancy Walker, Charo and Rose Marie while the Reaper was still stuck on Miss Piggy. (You all have dirty minds!)

The Reaper was so P.O.‘d that he sent me to the second level of hell—Mayberry! There I was; Aunt Bea was trying to fix me up with Thelma Lou, Opie kept wanting me to play quarters with him and Otis, Barney busted me and wanted to strip-search me, and Floyd the barber wanted to give me a bikini wax.

Luckily for me, I remembered the presidential elections in 1988, and was able to blackmail the Reaper by saying I’d tell everyone that he was Lloyd Bentsen. The physical resemblance was too uncanny for him to ignore, so he let me go.

Leif borrowed Michael J. Fox’s DeLorean and picked me up to bring me back to the Star. The robot double had already succeeded in conquering NIU. He made CAB show “Return to the Blue Lagoon” every week, paid Bob Dylan a cool mil to play a nooner and had named Don King as president when we arrived.

Using the time machine, we went to get help. After the mother of all skirmishes, with the combined might of the Terminator, Secret Squirrel, Huggy Bear from “Starsky and Hutch,” the Silver Surfer and Ironsides, we dissed the robot. Kristy McNichol ran up and kissed me, and we had a big parade like the one at the end of “Star Wars.” Then we used the time machine to put everything like it was before anything happened.

So that leads back to where I started, at the Star, writing my last column. I hope you’ve had fun in the last year, because it’s been a gut-wrenching nightmare for me. Just kidding! Thanks to everyone who has written or called or just said, “Hey, you’re the funny guy!” in bars. I really appreciate it, and I had a lot of fun. So until next we meet, BE CASUAL!

Is this the end of Sean Leary? No one knows, for destiny may perhaps bring him back again to these pages. But for now he remains, the weekly columnist in, The Twilight Zone.